


She Hasn't Lost Yet

by bye_byepetitepapillon (orphan_account)



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, At least one really scary intrusive thought, Basically Alya gets to suffer through my childhood, Bella wrote a thing!, If you like Alya Angst and Poetry then this is the ficlet for you!, Mentions of Intrusive Thoughts, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Attack, anxiety attack, so be prepared
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 19:09:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8501974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/bye_byepetitepapillon
Summary: And she doesn't plan to any time soon.Or,A particularly angsty poem type thing in which Alya suffers from my childhood OCD.





	

Alya was broken.  
She didn't know when she had come to this conclusion.  
But somewhere along the line she'd realized that she was broken.  
She thinks it started when he died.  
He was her world, her everything.  
And he was gone.  
She dwelled on this for years.  
And she thought.  
She thought and thought and thought.  
She didn't know if she was real.  
It wasn't the kind of questioning that is followed by a stunt pulled at school.  
It's when a nine year old lays in bed crying, because she is in awe of creation.  
Every Saturday started with the questioning.  
For a few years at least.  
She looks back at it and she's a terrible and shocking case of childhood depression that she wasn't sure was ever actually treated.  
She just knows that the questioning became a routine.  
A fact of life.  
Something that she never realized was not normal.

 

Then came the adjusting.  
Everything had to be just so, and if it wasn't, she fixed it.  
A certain number, a certain arrangement, it varied from subject to subject and sometimes wasn't there at all.  
Things had order, everything had it's place.  
And if she couldn't fix it, her skin crawled, and her scalp tingled, she scratched at her arms, pulled at her hair,

 

She broke.

 

And when middle school rolled around, it made it worse.  
Everything had it's folder, it's binder, it's notebook.  
And when it didn't, that's when she broke the first time.  
Her mother had bought the three subject notebooks.  
She could use the three subject notebooks because she would get them mixed up, and she'd WriteTheWrongWROngWRONG thing InTheWrongWROngWRONG spot AndEverythingWouldGetMixedUpAndShe'dFail.  
She'd fail school.  
She'd lose opportunities, and wouldn't get scholarships and everything would be for nothing.  
She’d never get to be a journalist, and she’d amount to nothing.

 

She asked her mother for different notebooks, but the mother couldn't see that she was breaking,

 

Couldn't understand.

 

Her mother told her she was ridiculous, that she should just deal with it, her sisters needed school supplies too, and until should could get her own job, she’d have to be satisfied with what she got.

 

But it's not that easy.

 

Alya was broken.

 

She couldn't handle it, everything was wrong, and she had to fix it.  
She went back to her room and tried to calm down.  
It worked!  
But only a little.

 

She asked again.  
Pleaded.

 

But her mother said no again.  
And Alya split in two.

 

She tried to rise and go back to her room, but suddenly she couldn't stand.  
The only option was to sit on the floor, and held her knees to her chest.  
Her skin was crawling.  
Her heart was racing.  
She was terrified.  
She just hoped her sisters wouldn’t have to see her like this.

 

She raked her nails across her skin, and pulled at the roots of her hair in a grueling pattern.

 

She was shaking, she was crying, she was terrified.

 

She was going insane.  
At least that's what it looked like.

 

Her nails dug into her skin, not enough to draw blood, never enough to draw blood.  
(Though there were claw marks and sore patches of skin for a few days afterward.)

 

The cycle of pulling and scratching, pulling and scratching, pulling and...

 

The cycle was the only way she found relief from the debilitating fear that kept her on the floor.  
The only real relief came when her mother said she would buy Alya new notebooks.  
(And pretended to be concerned about her mental health as well.)

 

Re-Hiding her brokenness was hard for the few days afterward.  
But she did it.  
She was good at being broken.  
She was even better at hiding it.

 

It's the little things, that bother most.  
It's as if she taped together her mind, but little bugs keep slipping in through the holes.  
They come, they go.  
For a while it's the order in which she turns off the lights.  
How she washes her hair.  
Even how she punctuates sentences.  
(Threes are especially important. When there's more than one, they come in threes. At least that's her policy on question marks, exclamation points, and emojis.)  
Her schoolwork and her binders are a minefield.  
All the stuff for the Ladyblog is arranged in a way only she can navigate, but she can't have it any other way,

 

She can't.

 

She can't stand burps, they contaminate the air.  
(She can practically see the germs, and she definitely cannot breathe until she finds cleaner air.)

 

She can't go fishing.  
(All those needles everywhere? No thank you.)

 

She can't put knives away.  
(Okay, this is only sometimes, but the vision of just chopping her hand off in one swift movement is almost too much for her.)  
(Or dropping it and having it stab straight through her foot to the floor? It's not possible, but it still haunts her.)

 

By the time she's in the eighth grade, every day reminds her of how broken she is.  
How much tape it took to put her mind back together.  
And every time someone doubts how broken she is,  
Well, there goes another piece of tape.  
Along with a stab to the heart.  
It hurts when they joke about the thing that broke her.  
They don't know that it breaks people.  
They don't know how it hurts.  
But Alya doesn't blame them.  
No one's taught them.  
How were they supposed to know that what they're joking about makes her feel like she's at war with herself?  
That her brain is fighting against her mind?  
That sometimes, it feels like she's losing?  
And she doesn't know if she can win a battle against herself?

 

But she hasn't lost yet.  
(And she doesn't plan to,)  
(At least not anytime soon.)


End file.
